Thursday, May 2, 2013

Roku 3 UK - UPDATE #4

OK... Hold the front page !!

As those of you who regularly follow the companion Twitter Feed to this blog: @ukrokuchannels will already know, I made a SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT earlier today following a brief exchange of messages (tweets, if you prefer) with the Official Roku Twitter Feed: @rokuplayer having spotted a comment they made concerning the rollout of the new interface (previously referred to as "The New Roku Experience" in other Roku 3 UK updates) to Roku 2, HD (model 2500), LT & Streaming Sticks.

In case you haven't seen it, Roku made an OFFICIAL STATEMENT to the effect that the long-awaited rollout was finally going to commence THIS WEEK, before thanking us for our patience. Then came a slew of questions from assorted Roku owners, mostly enquiring as to when in May they could expect the update on their Roku player(s). This, in turn, produced a somewhat vague and (dare I say) slightly cryptic response from Roku, the essence of which was, "Starting this week, the rollout will be gradual and in random order - we expect it to be complete by the end of May".

Apparently, the rollout will be "gradual" so that Roku can monitor any feedback more easily and, if necessary, act on that feedback more swiftly. The overall idea behind this being to try and make sure that the rollout is "a great experience for everyone". Their general advice is to "hang in there, if you don't see it this week" and, when asked if there was "any way of forcing the update?", they were quick to dismiss this with a rather curt, "not currently". So, it's still anybody's guess as to when in May things will take effect but certain(?) that it will be sometime this month. As you were then !!

Another snippet of information that I managed to glean from this flurry of tweets was that the rollout was going to be applied to Roku players in Canada. Thanks go to Patrick Bourdon (@bourdonfc) for seeking confirmation on that one. Seeing Roku's response to that particular line of enquiry, I decided it was worth a shot to ask whether we were going to be included in the rollout, here in the UK. This is what I was told:-

HINT: Click on the above image to ENLARGE IT for easier viewing

As you can see, the GOOD NEWS is that Roku have OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED that the rollout of the new interface "will include UK Roku players" so, it would seem that my previous doubts were incorrect and I, for one, am very grateful about that - as I'm sure are the vast majority of UK Roku owners, having been told this. Obviously, since there were no Roku HD (model 2500) players, or Streaming Sticks, officially made available in the UK, the models affected here will be the Roku LT and the Roku XS (as detailed in my post: "It's Time To... Choose Your Roku !!" back in February).

Not that it was needed, but Roku also made a separate confirmation when asked a direct question, as to whether the Roku 2 XS would be included on the interface update. Credit goes to 'Muy Buen Tema' (@muybuentema) for seeking an answer to that one. Anyway, the long & the short of it seems to be that, at the very least, we will get to try out the "New Roku Experience" on our existing Roku players while we wait & see if we are going to be honoured with an official UK release for Roku 3.

Hey... you never know !!

Still, that's about it for this update. Hope it was as much of a surprise to you, and brought as BIG A SMILE to your face, as it did to mine when I heard the news. See... it's not all bad !!!